If you ever wondered how much Keir Starmer is prepared to creep, grovel and humiliate himself in order to keep the PM’s job, just look at his latest outpouring of schmaltz for the disgraced Angela Rayner.
He’s now publicly saying the stamp duty dodger - who resigned after the ethics advisor said that in dodging £40,000 worth of stamp duty, she hadn’t met the proper standards of conduct - is “hugely talented” and should return to the cabinet.
So, if what she did was so serious that she had to resign from the Government in disgrace, how come it suddenly doesn’t matter anymore? It was only three months ago, for God’s sake! I’m sorry, but tax dodging is tax dodging, especially when Rayner – who was Deputy PM at the time - was doing it while her shoddy government was talking about imposing tax increases on property owners.
So, if resigning three months ago was the right thing to have happened, how come Starmer suddenly can’t do without her huge talents in Government and is making a complete fool of himself gushing about how much he misses her and is “so sad to have lost her”?
Come on, Starmer – you’re a bloody lawyer. You know what she did was wrong. And whatever her excuse was for doing it, the fact is, if any of us mere mortals had done what she’d done, we’d get clobbered. Because ignorance of the law is no excuse. How many times are we all told that?
More importantly, this woman was the Deputy Prime Minister and also the Housing Minister. She should have known the rules better than the rest of us. And do we know if she’s paid back that forty grand yet?
Of course, Starmer drooling over Rayner has nothing to do with her talents (actually, could someone please tell me what they are because I’m struggling) and everything to do with the fact he’s terrified of her and sees her as the biggest threat to his leadership. And he foolishly thinks that by taking her back into Government, it’ll stop her from going for his jugular and taking it.
Because that's what the rumours are. Add to that the fact that a Labour think tank is reportedly asking party members who they’d like to replace Starmer, and it's looking grim for our hapless PM.
Because the names that have popped up on that list include the climate change zealot, Ed Miliband(yikes) and Bridget Phillipson (double yikes), but it also included Angela Rayner, which goes way beyond “yikes”. It’s actually terrifying.
Do not be fooled by Keir Starmer. Angela Rayner's return is an extremely cynical ploy - Carole Malone
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Rayner must never be allowed to lead this country because it’ll be on its knees within months (just read her ruinous workers’ rights bill).
Yes, I know many in the Red Wall think because she’s Northern, working class and has managed to climb the greasy pole in the murky world of politics, she’s the best example of social mobility they’ve seen. And they think she understands working-class people because she talks like them and behaves like she’s still one of them.
But the truth is, she isn’t. Rayner is living in a different universe these days – and it sure as hell isn’t a working-class one. Now she lives in a world where she thinks she’s entitled to buy a £3,000 bed with taxpayers’ money, which is what she did when she was Deputy PM.
She was also very happy to accept freebies from the party’s benefactor, Lord Alli (clothes and a free trip in his New York apartment. And it’s becoming clear she doesn’t always tell the truth either.
In July this year, she clearly stated she never wanted to be PM, yet it's looking now like she’s very much like she’s on manoeuvres. There’s talk that to stop that and get her back on side, Starmer’s offered her the Education Secretary (Brigit Phillipson’s) job, but she’s turned it down.
There’s also more talk of her teaming up with Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, on a joint ticket for the Labour leadership, but Rayner is so well supported by the Hard Left of the Party she fancies her chances of going it alone.
And God help us all if she gets to PM. If you think this country has turned into a Commie style, totalitarian regime that spits on free speech (and freedoms in general), that punishes the strivers and the achievers and rewards the jobless and the feckless, just watch what happens if Rayner gets into power.
She has always been determined to tax the middle classes and the rich, whom she despises despite the fact that, as a cabinet minister, she was one of them, earning £160,000 a year. But the point of all this is that this Government has proved beyond doubt that they don’t give a damn about the country, the British people.
All they care about is their own jobs, their own salaries and what politics can do for them, not what they can do for us. Starmer is clinging onto his beleaguered premiership by the skin of his teeth, even though it’s clear to everyone he’s not up to the job. But to keep it, he’ll grovel and humiliate himself and beg people like Rayner to come back into Government because he knows if he does, her supporters on the Far Left of the Party will show pity on him and let him hang on a bit longer.
It's actually sickening. My prediction – Starmer will be ousted before Reeves. It could be January, or it could be after the May elections, but he will be, and Rayner will be the person pushing the hardest.
And that's why Starmer is so stupid – to imagine for a second that grovelling to a woman like Rayner was ever going to save him. All it's done is show her how scared and weak he is, and she sees now that she can crush him! And she will!